


Time's the Charm

by Siriex



Category: Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms, Fate/strange fake, Sensha Otoko: A True Tank Story (Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, And a buncha AUs for each reincarnatoin drabble, Not beta read I'm just hurling this at the wall and hoping it sticks, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:34:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26708332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siriex/pseuds/Siriex
Summary: Sometimes they miss each other.Sometimes they don't.
Relationships: Enkidu | False Lancer/Gilgamesh | Archer
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26





	Time's the Charm

**Author's Note:**

> So uh- this was intended to be a 25 Lives kind of thing, but I'm already out of ideas, so here's five.




Enkidu’s last days are agony. Their hands grip the sheets until even the gentlest weave scrapes away their fading skin. The curse comes and goes in waves like a sickness, and the lucid moments only make it more difficult.

The Ziggurat echoes with their screams. They spit vile curses that make their guards shake and turn away. Poison gushes from their mouth out into the world, until the halls are as dead as they will be. Gilgamesh hears word of their fit when he returns, laden down with medicine and tools alike (because, while he refuses to admit that Enkidu is a weapon, he is willing to try anything).

The hall leading to their quarters is scorched earth. Not even the smallest bug creeps across the sunbaked bricks. He braces himself as he walks through the door. He is the one-and-only king, and as such, he can handle most things without effort. Enkidu’s wrath is different.

What he sees and what he has heard are not completely at odds. The room is damaged, though not destroyed. Enkidu’s sheets lay on the ground, and the precious things Gilgamesh had littered about their room, from goblets to plants, clutter the floor.

Enkidu sits in the window, listing heavy to the frame. The formerly pristine bed is dusted with powdered clay. He will have to have it cleaned.

“Enkidu.”

It is unusual that he must call their name. He cannot remember the last time they hadn’t expected him.

“Enkidu.”

When they finally turn, tracks of shockingly vibrant skin map teardrop trails down their cheeks, while the rest of their face is cracked and pale. Their eyes go wide, and for a moment they gleam like sunlight through leaves and they smile in a way that sends another layer of their lips flaking off. “Welcome back, Gil.”

“ _Enkidu._ ” His voice feels strained coming out, and he is not sure whether it is the pain of it all, or whether he’s finally worked himself sick. The various medicines and implements tumble from his arms and scatter across the floor. He drags Enkidu into his arms, and they go willingly. Their head fits under his chin. He is surprised to discover it. In the past, any attempt at hugs turned to wrestling, turned to fighting, turned to laughter and (hopefully) dreamless sleep. 

Neither of them lives soft, but Enkidu is not living much longer.

“Are you hurt, my friend?”

Enkidu’s wry grin rasps against his collarbone. “Hardly.” They are light in his arms. That, too, is new. Clay, even divine clay, was dense. “I was only thinking.”

“Of what?” Gilgamesh makes a show of looking at the wreck of the room.

Enkidu has never bothered with shame and has not started now.

“Of this, and the things that led to it,” they say and nuzzle further into the crook of his neck. “Of the gifts that fate has given me. Of Shamhat, and Siduri, and Uruk,”

“And me?”

“And you.”

They exhibit nothing but sincerity, and it chills Gilgamesh until he feels the same temperature as their porcelain skin.

“I will not allow you to die,” he begs. “Shamhat, Siduri, and Uruk- There is no need to reflect upon the things within your reach.”

“But they are not,” Enkidu says in a hushed voice that is so unlike their own.

Gilgamesh has heard the people in the streets. They speak of Enkidu as some gentle thing, a creature of wisdom and tact that soothes the king’s harsher eccentricities. They know not of what they speak. Beneath the lacquer of smiles lies the beast that terrorized the outer woods. Gilgamesh has never once been fooled by their act. That is how he knows that this calm, this _acceptance_ , is real, even as his hopes reject it.

“I would like nothing more than to live again with them. With _you._ But I have been a broken weapon from the moment I stood by your side, Gil.”

His heart drops, but Enkidu dusts it off and pours it into his chest through their lips on his. They are dry and rough for the instant they linger, and then they are gone again.

“I am grateful I was broken, Gil.”

He does not understand. They read it on his face and laugh, though it jostles more clay from their shoulders. “Gil,” they say, “You see further than I ever could. I had always wanted to see the world through your eyes.” They roll their head to look to the window. In the course of their conversation, the sun had set, releasing the dusk stars to illuminate the sky. “Do you think that, in the future you see, we might meet again someday?”

There is no future. It is as dark as the cracks in Enkidu’s skin.

“Perhaps,” he says, but only because it is them. “Perhaps.”




Gilgamesh wears the title of “Sky King” like a second skin. He soars above the rabble on wings of polyurethane and his feet don’t once touch the ground. The hatchlings speak his name in careful whispers lest they attract his attention. The storm riders in this city live and die by his will. The emblems of every team that has dared defy him line his jacket.

The world rests under his heel until it doesn’t.

Revolution comes in the form of whispers. They speak of a new King, only just arrived, but already sourcing trouble. Hierarchies that Gilgamesh has cultivated for years are overturned in a night. Parts Wars rage, and all at once, his precious possessions are slipping out from under him. Dingir, the team he’d cultivated from the end to enforce his law, loses more parts than they have in their storied history, and his branch of Tool Toul To loses a Tuner.

There comes a time when a King must rise from this throne.

For the first time in years, he begins patrols. Night after night passes, only the phase of the moon marking the passage of time. The rumors are steady ground for his wheels to ride, but he can never grasp them in his hands.

The Gem King remains elusive.

Not a Gem _King,_ his subordinates insist. They call themself a Gem _Ruler,_ as if it makes a difference _._ They are strong, and that is what matters. The wind in his veins calls out to him. Rip. Rend. Tear their wings from their back until they fall to earth with the rest of the flock. 

Storm Riders populate the sky, and Gilgamesh is the atmosphere that binds them all. Their wings are their Air Treks, and they sling their bodies from building to building in an imitation of flight. The best place to find a Storm Rider is the air. That base assumption has blinded him.

Gilgamesh catches them towards the end of their stay, or rather, he catches sight of them.

It happens by chance. They are a wave of green, an undertow at street level that drags his eyes down and holds him captive. Drowning, gasping, clutching for air. His wheels snag on a stoop, and it is only the grace of countless years of muscle memory that hold him upright. He never once takes his eyes off the green, and he _knows._

Humidity clogs his throat and, though it is night, he can feel the warmth of the sun on his skin.

A weapon.

A name.

A longing that he has never felt, but aches like an old wound.

Gilgamesh gathers his composure and finds a perch and locks his wheels, but they are gone. Gone with them are the confusing emotions, passed like a dream. He hooks his wheels into the concrete and leaps after them. He coasts for hours, ignoring the exhaustion that plagues his limbs well past sunrise.

He never finds them in the end.

Days after he has repaid his sleep debt, one of his men tells him that the Gem King has left the city, accompanied by Shamhat of the Tool Toul To.

Months pass.

Pledge Queen Ishtar throws a fit over the disappearance of her intended successor, but it is nothing that Gilgamesh cannot handle. This and other conflicts rise and fall in oscillating waves until the pattern dampens and things return to normal. Gilgamesh sits upon his throne and watches the riders under his care struggle for against gravity as they always have.

In the winter of the fifth year of his rule, Shamhat returns to the city and Tool Toul To. Gilgamesh knows the truth before the rumors reach him; there is a new man who has claimed the title of Gem King. He calls himself Kingu and soars the skies on his inherited regalia. They say he is as strong as his predecessor, perhaps even stronger.

It should be everything Gilgamesh has been waiting for and more, but he cannot shake the sense that he has missed something.




Gilgamesh has known Enkidu since they were both too young to walk. Born on the same day, in the same town, and housed in rooms with opposing windows, they were always together. Their lives orbit the same planet, a universe away from Earth. Every morning, Gilgamesh wakes to Enkidu smiling through his window, and every night the soft glow of his bedroom illuminates the darkness in theirs.

It is easy to take the movement of the planets for granted, and so he does, and the firmament cycles through seasons for fifteen years.

In his second year of high school, Gilgamesh jolts awake in the middle of the night. Sweat coats his forehead in a film and his eyes are tacky with tears. The dream evaporates as quickly as he grasps it, and he is left with only the impression of someone who looked very much like Enkidu but was not Enkidu at all.

His Enkidu is short, bright, and wears a dress that flutters around their thighs. Not that he has looked. _That_ Enkidu was…

“Gil! So you _can_ wake up on time!”

Broken.

The remains of the dream paint fissures on Enkidu’s skin. Maybe it is a trick of the light, or maybe not, but they seem pale, and it hurts to look at them. He presses his head back into his pillow, holds his breath, and counts to ten to fend off the ache building in his chest.

Enkidu is not eager to give him space. “C’mon. We’ve got class! Get outta bed!” Their delicate hands hook into the sheets and rip them from his bed, leaving him defenseless. He curls further into his pillow. It is not uncharacteristic of him to resist attending school, but Enkidu’s hand on his shoulder feels gentler than normal. It does not feel like ‘his’ Enkidu’s hand. He jerks, and fragments of the dream stab into his waking mind.

“Hey, Gil. Are you okay?”

The answer is ‘no,’ but it is not the right question. Enkidu is dead. The thought echoes through his head, even as their voice becomes anxiety. Enkidu is dead. Enkidu is dead. An irrevocable truth his bones tell his brain.

Hands warm with blood and sun (not cool- not smooth like glazed clay-) grab his face and wrench him around.

Enkidu’s face overlaps with the dream, crumbling and healthy, and it turns his stomach. He claps his hand over his mouth and reels, stomach spilling across his tongue before he knows what is happening. Acid cuts down his chin as he desperately tries to hold it in- dinner, tears, screams, memories that are not his.

Mercifully, cruelly, Enkidu’s hands withdraw, and he can hear their bare feet slapping against the wood floor. “Kotomine! Kotomine, Gil’s sick!”

Kotomine is the last person that he wants to see right now. He swallows back down what he can. It burns his throat, but the pain in his chest is larger. He reigns in his thoughts and tries to tie them all up. Enkidu is worried and that hurts too. He does not know what to do or if there is anything that he can do, but for now it hurts, and he wants it to stop.

The next morning Enkidu’s fingers hook into his window frame the same way they have every day since they’d grown tall enough to bridge the distance. They pull and the pull, but the window is locked. It hurts.




Once upon a time, Gilgamesh was a king. The memory came to him in high school trapped between the pages of a bulk-bought book. It was much shorter than anything else they’d read that semester- short enough to read aloud in class.

_They grappled with each other at the entry of the marital chamber,_

_In the street they attacked each other, the public square of land._

_The doorposts trembled and the wall shook,_

Faces turned to look and fill the silence. A laugh forced its way past Gilgamesh’s lips. Then another. Then another.

“Is something funny?” His teacher held her copy open with her thumb pressed between pages.

“Yes,” he replied. “This is wrong. Doorposts? Walls? It was much more than that.”

“You may have the same name, but there’s no need to drag a fictional character into your massive ego,” his classmate remarked.

Gilgamesh ignored him.

“Do I need to ask someone else to read?” his teacher asked.

“No,” Gilgamesh said. And he’d continued.

That sense of ‘wrong’ did not fade through the 42 remaining pages of poetry. It itched at him enough that he made a stop at the library on the way home and find another translation. He read it cover-to-cover standing in front of the shelves. It was wrong too. He found a third translation, then a fourth and a fifth, but none of them seemed to fit.

He abandoned the translations entirely and tore through notes, papers, and a full college degree.

That brought him here. He presses the heel of his hand into his temple and counts down the seconds until his office hours are over. His family has enough money to pay his way through graduate school, but that sort of thing is simply not done. The teaching is supposed to be an educational experience. Many of his classmates insist that teaching has helped their understanding, but Gilgamesh begs to differ. He learns best here, in his office, with a book in his hands and his Akkadian dictionary propped up against his laptop.

Though the language came easily, mapping its words to concepts in his native tongue is still difficult. He keeps his pen between his teeth and glares at his screen. It was a tablet, recently recovered from some old billionaire’s private collection. Whoever he was, he did not know how to care for it. Much of the damage looks old, but there is an appreciable amount of new wear obscuring the remaining words. He knows what should be there the same way that he knew that Ishtar and Ereshkigal were two sides of the same coin, and Gilgamesh and Enkidu were something more profound than ‘very good friends.’

_Green hair splayed out over sheets. Half-hooded eyes that were as alluring as they were dangerous._

Gilgamesh pinches his brow and banishes the phantom. He has long since acknowledged that these thoughts and feelings are not delusion. They are too consistent and are often corroborated by newer discoveries. His adviser considers him a prodigy, but he knows better. It is not that he is not exceptionally intelligent and capable- it is that he knows these things because he remembers them.

They are not his memories.

That is not his friend.

None of it is his.

He grinds his wrist into his eye and hunches over his notes. Fine then. He would _make_ it his.

Never once does it occur to him that there might be someone else with the same thoughts.




Enkidu catches the chain at the tip of their lips and arranges their arm to dangle the pocket watch where it will catch the light. Their top furls down their front like a second skin, while the pants wardrobe selected flare out about their legs. They like the pants. They are comfortable, unlike the shirt. It is a shame they will not make it into the final spread.

Most things will not. By the end of the day, there will be hundreds more pictures of Enkidu in every conceivable pose, trying to highlight the latest innovation in outdated timepieces. The majority of the photographs will be deleted or otherwise stored on a hard drive somewhere. It is one of the occupational hazards of being a model.

They’d been looking for an opportunity for a very long time, not to model, but to get their face in as many places as possible. They have garnered a reputation for taking on almost any job. Their agent tells them that it is not necessarily a good reputation to have, and they are receiving an increasing number of offers that involve fewer clothes and lower pay. She screens them of course. If she did not, Enkidu would take them too. They do not care about the money or the clothing, so long as they get their face in as many places as possible.

They are trying to find someone, or rather, they want him to find them.

For as long as Enkidu can remember, they have had vivid dreams. They cannot remember the details of any particular dream, but the translucent memories overlap until they form a general picture. They remember heat and the feeling of dirt under bare feet as if they’d lived it. They remember wind in their hair, and the rush of wheels carrying them wherever they wanted to go. They remember climbing through windows and resenting blonde figurines. They remember a dissertation catalogued in the wrong section of the library.

Every dream has a man with four overlapping faces, and they know there is a fifth outside of their dreams.

They do not have a name, a solid face, or even a continent.

Cameras snap and flash.

These photographs are intended for billboards. The campaign will run across much of Europe and the Americas. It is one of the biggest they’ve participated in yet.

They hope it will be enough.

The cameras stop, one or two stray shots snapping as they adjust the drape of their hair. They are dripping in sweat from the lights, but it is nothing that they cannot fix in post. Their agent approaches with towel in hand and offers it for them to dab away the worst of it. They press it into their face and drag it down, mussing their makeup. Accustomed to their ways, she snatches it away with a groan. “The photoshoot may be over, but your day isn’t. We’ll need to take you back to makeup.”

They are sure that their eyeliner is smeared down their cheeks. They rub the towel harder until it hurts. “The meeting’s right after the shoot, right? There’s not time for that. Just grab me a few makeup wipes so I can take it off before he gets here.”

She whips away to do just that.

This is not the first time that some higher-up at a company has wanted to talk to them, but it is rare. Usually the people with the money are far too busy to bother with the details. Enkidu is glad that it is rare. They think about the book they’d left back home, a slip of paper marking just twenty pages from the end. Their bed is a mess of tangled sheets, and they have a plate of leftover pasta in their fridge just waiting to be reheated.

The wipes are not quite enough to get rid of the stains their eyeliner left behind. Their agent hums her displeasure. Enkidu does not care.

They ball them up and toss them in the nearest trashcan with pinpoint accuracy when a commotion starts by the door to the studio. 

The owner is tall and slim, with the look of youth but the air of someone considerably older. He has aged well, Enkidu decides. That or he dyes his hair and indulges in Botox. It might be hypocritical for Enkidu to judge someone for placing too much value on appearances, but they can hardly help themself. For future’s sake they shift into a smile and weave through the crowd.

“You wanted to see me?” they ask. They offer their hand, already dreading flashbacks to the countless clammy handshakes they’ve entertained in the past. It is nothing like that, and they are grateful. His grip is warm, confident, and they can’t help the sense that they are missing something. They look up.

This close, his face is sharp, familiar, and it makes their head spin. They adjust their footing to stave off one of the fainting spells they thought they’d outgrown. It is not just the sensation that reminds them of the past. His voice when he speaks calls to something much, much further than that. Before high school, before childhood, before even their dreams.

“I suggest you let go unless you would like me to retaliate in kind.”

Black blots cloud their vision as they rush to look down. His hand is red where theirs holds it. They let go, and it takes precious moments for his skin to bounce back from their grip. They move back. “I’m sorry, Gil!”

His name is not Gil. They do not know why they’ve called him that. The prickling presence of their agent is at their shoulder, and they know they will receive a scolding later.

“En?”

The man’s lips are parted, though not as wide as his eyelids. He clears his throat, shakes his head, and presses a hand back through his golden hair.

Enkidu understands the urge. They take a breath to steady themself. “Pretty sure I’ve never met you before.” They are not sure if they have gotten the words out: their voice seems faint under the restless pounding of their heart. They can feel its beats in their fingertips where they twitch, regretting relinquishing his hand. They want to squeeze it until they can feel is his pulse is racing like theirs. They want to feel his bones creak.

“And I am certain that I have never met you,” he replies.

Enkidu sees him roll his wrist. Restless. Anxiety they had not known they’d felt gives way to the rush of the downward slope of a rollercoaster, and they want to raise their hands to the sky and let out a scream, because _they have not met before._ “I could have sworn I saw you in my nightmares,” they squeeze out through their smile. Adrenaline pitches their voice higher. They can feel their agent’s manicure digging into the meat of their arm, but they shake her off.

“Have you? Perhaps we both have a habit of haunting dreams.” He ticks his chin up another degree, but they can still see the way his smile distorts his stern face. “You will have to tell me more. There is an adequate restaurant a little ways from here. You will accompany me.”

They are coasting on a wave of déjà vu. Their head feels light, and they grab for his hand again. There is a brief pause before he shakes himself free, looking just as unbalanced as they feel. They look over their shoulder at their agent, and she rolls her eyes so hard they are certain it hurts. “If that is where you want to hold your meeting, I don’t have any objections,” she tells them. And then, “You have a shoot downtown early tomorrow.”

“Yes, _Mom._ ”

But she is smiling and so are they. They round on the man with their hands on their hips. “Let me get changed.”

“There will be a car waiting outside the front entrance in ten minutes. If you are not there on time, I am leaving without you.”

“Roger,” Enkidu cheers. Their shirt smacks him in the face as they sprint to the changing area.

They think he is smiling. 

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. that's just the Epic of Gilgamesh  
> 2\. Air Gear AU  
> 3\. Sensha Otoko  
> 4\. Academia AU  
> 5\. Model AU
> 
> The quote from the Epic in #4 is from Maureen Kovacs's translation. (I'm sorry if you find this fic when you're googling yourself. Gosh I hope you don't. That would be very embarrassing for me. Thank you for your hard work though you're awesome.)


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